Technology as a Nonprofit Force Multiplier

2014-August 20
by Don Matteson, Chief Program Officer

Exponent Philanthropy
recently posted a great article on the value of supporting nonprofits'
technology
needs.
There's no question that most not-for-profit organizations are
technology-starved. My own experience working in not-for-profit information
technology a decade ago (am I really that old?) consisted largely of performing
CPR on decrepit machines that could barely keep up with the day-to-day demands
of word processing and email.

Technology is what the military calls a "force
multiplier:" something that makes a force (in this case a not-for-profit
organization) more effective than it would be otherwise. For technology to be
the force multiplier it can be for not-for-profits, we need to recognize that
the greatest long-term benefit is likely to be found in equipping the
employees: administration, communications, development, finance, teachers,
clinicians.

The problem is that many (most?) funders want to see their
technology money go to benefit their target populations directly. This leads to
grants that pay for shiny new equipment in computer labs for kids' after-school
programs, but leave the finance department managing budgets using what amounts
to an electronic abacus. I'm certainly not arguing that kids don't need
computer labs, but in the seemingly unending era of doing more with fewer
resources, technology can help organizations streamline the ancillary work and
let them spend more of their time and energy on serving people.

Today's information technology needs are exponentially
greater than they were a decade ago, and the array of options for products and
services is truly dizzying. In this climate, it's important to be deliberate
about what technology an organization needs to best advance its work. Further,
it's essential to enlist technology experts to help navigate the choices and to
identify what solutions offer the best bang-for-the-technology-buck.

We've offered (and plan to continue offering) technology
grants for the past six years through a stand-alone request for proposals (RFP)
in order to help organizations working in our fields and funding geography meet
this critical need. We've divided our initiative into two phases: planning
(cleverly called Phase I) and implementation (called -- wait for it -- Phase
II).

The Phase I grants are straightforward grants that are used
to pay technology consultants to work with eligible not-for-profits to
determine where they are with technology, what they need (hardware, software,
policies, and training), and write a plan to get them where they need to go.
These plans are focused explicitly on back-office operations -- the very need
that so many not-for-profits can't/won't/don't address. We have a short list of
consultants that past grantees have worked with, but we generally like to let
organizations choose their own consultants.

We award up to $125,000 in our Phase II grants, but we
require a dollar-for-dollar match for our funds. The match is important because
after our grant goes away, there will be an ongoing expense associated with
keeping technology up to date. The ability to put up those matching funds,
which can come from any (legal) source helps give us some confidence that the
organization will be able to maintain the gains realized through our grant.

The bulk of the Phase II money ends up going into hardware
and infrastructure (cabling, servers, switches, routers, and computers), but we
also take a careful look at whether the projects include training in their
budgets. While it's fun to buy shiny new desktops and enormo-screen displays,
the reality is that without training the staff, we're paying for expensive
paperweights. Technology can't be a force multiplier if the staff have no idea
how to use it.

Overall, we've been pleased with how our technology grants
have turned out. Workflows have been streamlined, communications (internal and
external) have been improved, clinicians have gained access to tools that let
them spend more with the people they're serving than filling out paperwork.
We've certainly experienced a few philanthropic "blue screen of
death" equivalents, but
on balance the technology plans and implementations we've funded seem to have
done what we hoped -- made our not-for-profit partners more effective than they
would have been otherwise.